Things are heating up as South India’s most anticipated animation festival, the ABAI fest is drawing closer with less than four days left for it.
Beginning on 1st September, the two day fest is being organized by the Association of the Bangalore Animation Industry and this year it has the bigwig in the animation industry, Dreamworks sharing gyan with the audience.
The core organising team that consists of Aruna K (MAAC), Chetan S (ANTS), Balakrishnan(Mediateck), C Prakash (Raydrops) Ashish Kulkarni (Anirights Infomedia) is working round the clock to ensure that the event evolves to the next level.
“The response from the students for participation from all over south of india is pushing ABAI fest in a very positive manner and most of the students are looking at it as an annual knowledge festival” shared Aruna.
“We have been at it for the past six months” Chetan commented on the Co ordination and arrangement activity”We are extremely happy to grow from a one day event to a two day festival”
Speaking about the ABAI fest, Ashish Kulkarni, Chairman of ABAI shared with AnimationXpress.com, ” Honouring the core value of ABAI which is enhancing skills, we are able to gather absolutely world class masters in story telling, story boarding, character setup, character animation, visual effects, gaming and DI to present the case studies and the making at ABAI Fest. I see this as a great opportunity for all students and working professionals as well as business heads in animation, gaming and visual effects benefitting from the program design at ABAI Fest. We have specially taken care that students and working professionals can have a free interaction with the masters.”
After the overwhelming response last year, the sessions this year are concentrated on enhancing the skills in the areas of Animation,VFX and Gaming. The organizers have carefully planned to give first hand information from the masters from these fields.
Dignitaries who would be present at the fest include:
Chief Guest for ABAI 2007, Mr. Ramesh Arvind (Famous Kannada Filmstar)
Guest of Honor, A.P. Parigi (Times Group)
Felicitating, Uncle PAI (IBH Tinkle) and Ramesh Ji (Prasad Labs)
ABAI fest �07, will showcase studies and presentations by artists from DreamWorks Animation SKG – US (making of Shrek – 1,2,3), Prasad Labs showcasing the making of Shivaji, AniRights showcasing the making of Little Krishna and much more.
The impressive list of speakers is as follows:
DreamWorks Animation SKG –
Philippe Gluckman, Visual Effects Supervisor
David smith, Story Board Artists
Jason Reisig, Supervising Animator
Larry Cutler, character Technical Drector Supervisor
Matt Baer, Head of Effects PDI / Dreamworks
Jason Schleifer
AniRights Infomedia Pvt. Ltd.
-Ashish S.K.
-Vincent
-Vikram Veturi
-Shyam Deshpande
-Vinayak Kurne
-Bala
-Anto Ramesh Paul
R & H
-Sesha Prasad
-Prasad Labs
-Mohan
Zapak DIG. Ent
-Rohit Sharma
-Virgin Comics
-Shiju Thomas
Tata Elxsi
-Vishal
Toons
-Prosenjit Ganguly
MAAC
-Naveen Gupta
Prime Focus
-Vinod
AnimationXpress.com
-Anand Gurnani
CG Tantra
R K Chand
Whistling Woods International
Gokul K
Independent Producers
-Vaibhav Kumaresh
-Chetan
-Gitanjali Rao
P C Vikram
C Prakash, Treasurer of ABAI added, “We are extremely happy with the overwhelming response from our sponsors. AMD, HP & NVidia, Paprikaas, AutoDesk, Foundry, Toonskool, Manipal University, Whistling Woods, MAAC, ANTS, Taksha, Tata Elxsi, Zapak & Final Cutpro Shake.”
“We are excited about the fact that all the technology majors and the animation schools have come forward to support the event whole heartedly. I also would like to mention that the support from all the speakers, CG Tantra our content partner and AnimationXpress.com our media partner is helping us immensely in shaping up ABAI Fest 2007. We also appreciate and enjoy an encouraging support from Animation Reporter, TASI, Isearch and efactor.” Ashish Kulkarni pointed out.
“Its not only the workshops and the “making of” presentations, we have an online contest, we are showcasing Indian panorama at a screening, there’s also an on the spot animation contest… these give a different dimension to the event and its almost setting a festive mood with activity bubbling in the campus at multiple locations simultaneously” concluded Balakrishnan.
